Unity Totem was commissioned by the Jewish Museum in New York and featured in a solo exhibition at the museum in 2024. For this piece, Ilit researched the Jewish Museum’s collection, signaling out 20 historical items created by Jewish communities in the Arab world. Incorporating various methods of photomontage and digital collage, she stitched these objects together into an enigmatic composition. Based on a central axis, and seemingly caught in mid-spin, the objects are rendered as a centrifugal force that thrusts the magic they possess outward into the world. The inscriptions around the image are quotes from three healers who meditated on the work in order to activate its spiritual energy. 

Over the past two decades Ilit’s research-driven work has focused on deconstructing photography’s notion of the “decisive moment,” and offering instead contemplations on the ways that visual information is processed culturally and politically.  In Unity Totem, she advances her inquiry, examining the capacity of images to document the relics of time and radiate their own totemic force.

The work was acquired by the Jewish Museum, New York, 2025.